MS Office for the iPad is Free This Weekend

Got an iPad? And are you withing driving distance of a Microsoft Store? Then I have some good news for you.Microsoft launched Office for the iPad yesterday, and as part of the promotion they are giving away a free 1 year subscription to Office 365. Yes, the Office app is free in iTunes, but you'll need the subscription to access most of the features.

Unfortunately, that free 1 year subscription comes with a catch. You have to bring your iPad on to a Microsoft Store, and you have to be one of the first 50 iPad owners to show up at that location.

I don't know about you, but that's going to present a problem for this blogger; the closest Microsoft Store is about an hour away. Given the price of gas and the value I put on my time, the $84 that this freebie would save just isn't worth the hassle. (And it's for an app I wouldn't use much, anyway.)

The offer is good through Sunday, so if this sounds like a good deal to you then check the MS Store website for a local store. There are 60 odd stores in the US and Canada.

And if you're still on the fence as to whether the subscription is a good value, here's a chart which lays out the features found in the free app vs the paid subscription. In short, creating, editing, and saving documents requires the subscription:

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Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."